Now this is journalistic excellence: staff members of the local alternative weekly paper in Salt Lake reports the big story, after decamping to the nearest bar to wait out the boring part of being evacuated because of a bomb scare at the bank building across the street.

Not only is it insightful and edgy, but traditional and slightly boozy at the same time.

Mom would have gotten the biggest laugh out of this, because in her younger days she knew a lot of boozy old journalists who would have covered the story from the nearest bar, too.

CW Blog: Irregular Blogging by Irregular Writers …: A Bomb! A Bomb! Oh My!

It all started, according to Wihongi, at around 2:45 pm when a 30-something white male walked into the Wells Fargo building with a bag and said something like: “I have a bomb.” After police took the suspect into custody at gun point, the bomb squad came on the scene. Geared up for Armageddon, the armored crew dealt with the potential threat that was waiting inside of the building.

Among the crowd of cameras circling Wihongi were the folks from KUTV 2. They had come all the way from…their offices in the Wells Fargo building. They too had been evacuated. Luckily, though, they brought their trusty cameras and microphones with them when they ran from their desks. They were ready to catch all the action. So, I guess, the news came to them.

As for City Weekly and staff, apparently the width of Main Street and our windows were not enough to keep the staff safe from a potential explosion. So, we absconded to the safest place we could find, a bomb shelter of sorts: Port O’ Call.

By around five, after several beers, it was discovered that, yes, the bomb scare had been a hoax. Alas, the crowds that for once made downtown feel like, er, a city had been swept back into their air-conditioned high-rises never to be seen again.

[tags]Utah Counterculture, bomb scare, Salt Lake, alternative weekly[/tags]